Researchers, policymakers, and industries recognize the urgent need to develop a new convergent urban science to chart pathways to more sustainable urban environments. To build this science, a critical hurdle must be overcome: representation of complex urban forms and urban-scale processes in large-scale Earth system models (ESMs).

This project strives to develop a novel urban modeling framework that combines both process-based modeling and cutting-edge, physics-informed deep learning networks, using recent advances in urban climate theories, data, modeling, and high-performance computing.

The urban population is expected to nearly double in three decades, whereas half of the urban infrastructure that we will need in 2050 has not yet been built. This massive urbanization exposes cities to substantial risks but also presents a historic opportunity to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change and to advance global sustainability growth.

September 2023 Update

• Project PI Lei Zhao recently earned two prestigious awards:

  • The American Geophysical Union’s Global Environmental Change Early Career Award, announced Sept. 13. He will be recognized at AGU23 on Dec. 11-15.
  • And the International Association for Urban Climate’s Timothy Oke Award for Original Research in the Field of Urban Climatology, announced during the International Conference on Urbana Climate Aug. 28-Sept. 1 in Sydney, Australia.

Spring 2023 Updates

• Project PI Lei Zhao’s graduate students, Civil and Environmental Engineering Ph.D. students Joyce Yang, Xinchang “Cathy” Li and Bowen Fang, recently received the Andrew Slater Award from the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)’s Land Model Working Group. The awards committee cited the team’s impressive advancements in recent years related to the development of transient urban capabilities as well as the application of the model to investigate changing heat stress and energy demand under climate change in urban environments. Full story >>>

• Yang and Zhao co-authored “Large Humidity Effects on Urban Heat Exposure and Cooling Challenges under Climate Change” in Environmental Research Letters, and graduate student Laura Gray and Zhao co-authored “Impacts of Climate Change on Global Total and Urban Runoff” in Journal of Hydrology. Both projects were partly funded by the iSEE seed grant.

• Zhao was part of a team that authored “Increased Heat Risk in Wet Climate Induced by Urban Humid Heat” in Nature. The study was partly supported by the iSEE seed grant.

The Project Leaders

• Lei Zhao, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

• Jinhui Yan, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

• Francina Dominguez, Associate Professor of Atmospheric Sciences

However, increasingly severe weather (e.g., the devastating and costly 2020 derecho event) and racialized social inequities create barriers against inclusive, sustainable development.

Using a system of midsized communities like Champaign-Urbana, Peoria, and Aurora as a testbed, the research team will investigate the many interlocking systems that comprise the urban-rural network, with a specific focus on the following subsystems: food (security and agricultural land management); water (infrastructure and flood/drought mitigation); energy (generation and use); and people (movement between cities, “white flight,” and segregation).

Systems of midsized cities and their rural surroundings differ from large metropolitan environments in that they dually rely on agriculture and infrastructure; however, these synergistic systems are under-studied. Data generated from this research will create a new wealth of knowledge to inform best practices for land management, ecological biodiversity, government, and environmental justice.

The Project Team (updated Summer 2021)

• Amy Ando, Professor of Agricultural & Consumer Economics
• Julie Cidell, Professor of Geography & Geographic Information Science 
• Shaowen Wang, Professor of Geography & Geographic Information Science
• Andrew Greenlee, Associate Professor of Urban & Regional Planning
• James O’Dwyer, Associate Professor of Plant Biology
• Ryan Sriver, Associate Professor of Atmospheric Sciences
• Ashlynn Stillwell, Associate Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering
• Deanna Hence, Assistant Professor of Atmospheric Sciences
• Liang Chen, Research Scientist in Climatology, Illinois State Water Survey
• Brenda Molano-Flores, Plant Ecologist, Illinois Natural History Survey
• Ashish George, Postdoc
• Jose Acosta-Cordova, Graduate Student, Geography & Geographic Information Science
• Allisa Hastie, Graduate Student, Civil & Environmental Engineering
• Emma Walters, Graduate Student, Urban & Regional Planning
• Kaylee Wells, Graduate Student, Agricultural & Consumer Economics

But removing nitrogen from waterways — from the Chicago River to the Mississippi — poses extreme scientific and environmental challenges. To remedy this growing concern, a U of I research team is fashioning an environmentally sustainable system to not only capture excess nitrogen from contaminated water, but also upcycle that nitrogen for reuse in products like ammonia (which is itself an agricultural fertilizer).

To develop a fully renewable-energy-based process to recover and use nitrogen, the team will take a three-pronged approach. First, they’ll use a sophisticated, electrically powered nitrogen-selective separation process to remove the chemical from polluted water. Next, the nitrate will be upcycled into ammonia. (While current methods for ammonia production are energy-intensive and contribute 3% of global carbon emissions, this team’s method will use renewable electricity.)

The final step in this process is a techno-economic and life cycle analysis, to ensure the value and holistic sustainability of the nitrogen removal and ammonia production process as a whole. Ultimately, this combination of nitrogen recovery and use will promote sustainable land stewardship, strengthen community resilience to nitrogen runoff, and encourage energy-efficient nutrient recycling on a larger scale.

The Project Team

• Xiao Su, Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
• R. Mohan Sankaran, Donald Biggar Willett Professor of Nuclear, Plasma & Radiological Engineering
• Prashant K. Jain, Professor of Chemistry and Alumni Scholar
• Xinlei Wang, Professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering

FEBRUARY 2023 UPDATE

A team led by Su recently completed a study, published in Nature Communications, that demonstrates energy-efficient conversion of nitrate pollutants into ammonia. Read the U of I News Bureau news release >>>

SUMMER 2021 UPDATE

In April, the team put in a $2 million proposal (“EFRI-DChem: Electrically-Powered Manufacturing of Value-Added Nitrogen Compounds;” lead PI: Sankaran; Co-PIs: Jain, Wang, Su, and one more) to the National Science Foundation’s Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI) program. A decision is pending.

On July 3, Su and co-authors published “Redox-Mediated Electrochemical Desalination for Waste Valorization in Dairy Production” in Chemical Engineering Journal. Read the U of I News Bureau news release >>>